Death Match: Pineapple vs Coconut

The theist's banana is
no match for the
atheist's pineapple.

Coconut or Pineapple: Which one is the theist's worst nightmare?

Note: This is not intended to be a serious post. It should be taken about as seriously as one should take Ray's attempt to prove God with a banana.

Adrian Hayter, from The Atheist Blogger, noted on my first installment of The Theist Test that a pineapple is the proper theist's nightmare, and not the coconut. I frequently devour pineapples and, I must say, they're quite easy to open. The coconut, though, about killed me when I first tried to open it, as I hadn't the slightest clue as to how. When I slammed it against the counter and it came back at me... I take that to be an attempt on my life.

THE RULES
To the point, I decided to do a proper match between the coconut and the pineapple. Since the argument Ray uses is that God designed the banana for us (hands, indicators, opening, etc) and illustrates it with just his hands, the rules of this death match will follow in the same non-numinous spirit:

1. No man-made tools may be used. A knife would certainly make the pineapple easier to open, as would a butcher's knife or machete for the coconut. Since God didn't design the knives or machete, using them would be giving him inappropriate help (cheating).
1a. God did design certain aids, such as rocks and my hands, so those may be used.
1b. The rock or any other God-designed tool may not be improved on. If God truly designed it, it should be perfect anyway.
2. The fruit must be in a condition where nearly all of its edible contents can be consumed using just the mouth and hands. In the pineapple's case this means removal of the skin (not necessarily the leaves) and in the coconut's case this means get it in small enough pieces that it can be consumed.

Following the death match, a tallying will be done covering how the fruits fair using Ray's ten criteria he applied to the banana. A conclusion will announce the winner. If the pineapple wins, I will make this blog my personal pineapple, then.

THE CONTESTANTS
In this corner: a pineapple. In that corner: a coconut.

Which one will cause Ray to start shivering when he passes through the produce isle? Which one will give Kirk some praying pains? Which one will be... THE THEIST'S NIGHTMARE? Only one will remain standing.

THE TOOLS

I am unsure of what I will need, so I have gathered the following for outside:

1. A giant rock almost too heavy to lift. It will serve as some rock structure you might find near where you get the pineapple or coconut to beat it against.
2. Four stones of varying sizes, all able to comfortably fit in the hand (they must have been designed that way).
3. Two sticks. They may be needed to pry or dig some of the fruit out of the skin/shell.
4. Two bananas. If God has designed them to be truly the atheist's nightmare, they should serve as a fine tool to quickly dispel the theist's nightmare.
5. Two hands (conveniently attached to my body, which I found outside at the time).


THE BATTLE -- THE COCONUT
First up, the coconut.



Plan A was to give it a whack with the mighty banana. But alas, it failed miserably. Perhaps the intelligently designed banana that I purchased was defective.

Luckily, I had a Plan B prepared. My strategy was to bang it against the rock (I forgot about the rock and accidentally used the patio where I am staying for the first blow). One mighty thrust downward and the coconut nearly split in two. With a twist of my mighty hands, I failed to finish the splitting process. A whack on my giant rock did the job, though.

The next step was to get the halves into even smaller pieces. The goal, remember, is to get them into sizes small enough to be able to eat the meat from the shells using just my teeth and fingers.

I laid the halves on the giant rock and took one of my hand-sized stones and thrust it upon the coconut, scattering it into many pieces.

It was going much quicker than I had anticipated. Continuing this process with a few dozen more whacks, I finally broke the pieces down small enough to where I could (hypothetically) easily eat the meat from the shell. And now, behold:



THE BATTLE -- THE PINEAPPLE
Next up to bat: the pineapple.



As you may have suspected, my Plan A was to give it a whack with the mighty banana. But alas, it, like the coconut's, failed miserably. Perhaps I was unlucky enough to get two defective intelligently designed bananas.

I just knew the banana would work, though, and I didn't have a Plan B. My college education kicked in, though, and I devised a plan wherein I would whack it against a giant rock. It put a good dent on one side of the pineapple and made it easy to dig the contents out. Before doing that, I decided to remove the tab.

As much as I had studied Ray's video on the banana, it seems I would have flunked any test on it because, try as I might, I could not seem to remove the top of the pineapple by pulling on its leafy tab.

Luckily, I came up with another strategy. I hammered the leafy top off with stone against the rock. After going around it once, I could then pull it off by its tab (with some effort). It seems my pineapple was also defective as it lacked the perforation that Ray noted about the intelligently designed banana.

After that, I dug the fruit out to the core from the dented portion of the pineapple. The other, undented side was too firm to have its fruit dug and ripped out. As such, it was another few whacks against the rock and it came up looking like shredded pineapple.

The skin wasn't removed from the final product. It was, however, in little pieces like the coconut making it easy to eat it off the skin. The core had remaining fruit around it which also could be eaten off of it. In the end, it looked like:




THE SCORECARD

Scoring will be done on a 0-4 basis. 0 being not intelligently designed/unintelligently designed/defective; 4 being as intelligently designed as the mighty banana. I will first use Ray's ten criteria (discussing it for both fruits) and then a few of my own which I think are worthy, including how long it took me to open them.

1. Is shaped for human hand
Coconut: It is not at all shaped for the human hand. It has no ridges matching up with the hand. You can comfortably hold it, though. D-. (+1)
Pineapple: Holding it in the checkout line was extremely awkward, uncomfortable, and unpleasant. F. (+0)

2. Has non-slip surface
Coconut: It does indeed... A. (+4)
Pineapple: There's really no non-slip surface here. The spikes make you want to let it slip. It's not frictionless, though. D-. (+1)

3. Has outward indicators of inward content:
Coconut: It does turn brown when ripened, but no color indicator of being too late or if the coconut water is bitter. C-. (+2)
Pineapple: You can examine the leaves and the uniformity of the markings along the pineapple, but this is no clear outward indicator of inward content. F+. (+0)

4. Has a tab for removal of wrapper
Coconut: It's a sphere. F-. (+0)
Pineapple: It has a leafy tab, but it's hardly for removal of wrapper. F. (+0)

5. Is perforated on wrapper
Coconut: Nope. F-. (+0)
Pineapple: Nope. F-. (+0)

6. Bio-degradable wrapper
Coconut: Yes, but probably a lot longer than the banana's 2-10 days. C. (+2)
Pineapple: Yes, but probably longer than the banana's 2-10 days. B. (+3)

7. Is shaped for human mouth
Coconut: Not for mine. F. (+0)
Pineapple: Epic failure. F-. (+0)

8. Has a point at top for ease of entry
Coconut: "top"? F-. (+0)
Pineapple: Nope. F-. (+0)

9. Is pleasing to taste buds
Coconut: It is pleasing... but as much as a banana? B+. (+3)
Pineapple: I was in tears once I finished mutilating it as I could not eat it. A+. (+4)

10. Is curved towards the face to make eating process easy
Coconut: It's curved towards the face alright (and everywhere else). F-. (+0)
Pineapple: Nope. F-. (+0)

11. Is easy to harvest from the plant
Coconut: It's in a tall palm tree. It falls several months after ripening, striking you on the head, and the water being bitter.? F. (+0)
Pineapple: Telling when it's ready is a bit difficult and it's spikey making it difficult to hold on to. C-. (+2)

12. Is easy to open with just your body
Coconut: Impossible. Epic failure. G-. (+0)
Pineapple: I suppose you could smash it with your fist, but it's far from easy. D-. (+1)

13. Is easy to open using stuff found in nature (like rocks)
Coconut: Took me five minutes to get it opened/broken enough to eat. It wasn't easy. F-. (+0)
Pineapple: Took me four minutes to get it opened and expose all the fruit content to eat. It wasn't easy. D- (+1)

14. Once opened with nature items, it's easy/clean to eat.
Coconut: Not really. Getting the fruit away from the shell was difficult with the teeth. It is clean though. C. (+2)
Pineapple: Messy, messy, messy. F. (+0)


Coconut: 25% (+14)
Pineapple: 21.4% (+12)

CONCLUSION

The pineapple and coconut are both, definitely, theist's nightmares. But which one is worse?

After tallying up the scores and seeing how close the two were, I had to decide how important the fact is that it is impossible to open a coconut with just your hands and feet (no rocks or anything). Certainly that factor is more important than it having a non-slip surface. If God were to design something for humans, he should at least have the foresight to have made it able to be opened by our hands, as he did with the banana.

This was subject to Ray's asinine criteria and, based on those alone, the pineapple gets a dismal 20%. So, if by that criteria alone, a banana is judged to be the atheist's nightmare, then we can say, based on these criteria, the pineapple is truly...
THE THEIST'S WORST NIGHTMARE